A major theoretical question in cognition is how contextual information is brought to bear in identifying spoken and written words and objects. We propose to investigate the interaction of context and stimulus information in perception and immediate memory for words at four sequential points in processing, each reflected in a particular paradigm. These are: (1) an early stage of perception, sensitive to repetition blindness; (2) a somewhat later stage involving selection of one perceived word from several possible word candidates activated by that stimulus, when nonword conversion may occur; (3) a subsequent stage at which, if two words have been perceived at or near the same time and are competing for a single slot in a sentence, attentional priority is allocated to one, as in double-word selection; and (4) a short-term memory phase in which a conceptual representation of a sentence or sentence fragment tunes the meaning of words, leading to primed lexical intrusions in short-term recall. These four stages or levels serve as an initial framework for testing a modular interactive model of word identification. Three questions addressed in the proposed research are the time course of context effects, and in particular the time period over which a stimulus remains malleable and subject to reinterpretation after it has been presented; what contextual factors a given level is sensitive to; and whether more standard on-line tasks, lexical decision and naming, provide converging evidence for the model we are developing. Nineteen studies are proposed, some of which use pictured objects to investigate differences between conceptual and lexical processing. The long-range scientific significance of the work derives from the central role that written and spoken language plays in human cognition. The practical significance of the proposed work lies in the importance of understanding in detail the process of reading and language comprehension, in order to place the teaching of reading and the use of written communication on a rational scientific foundation.